eVolo Magazine has announced the winners of its 2013 speculative skyscraper design competition. Novelty, be it technical or aesthetic, is the order of the day, and while one shouldn't expect to see any of these designs crop up in their chosen city of residence at any point in the next 3,000 or so years, there is plenty of first rate eye-candy and a smattering of urban speculative to peruse. Prepare to suspend disbelief.

The awards are given to bold concepts for skyscrapers submitted directly to the architecture magazine, and, it should be stressed, not to actual skyscrapers designed or built during the last 12 months.

The first place award went to Derek Perozzi for his eye-catching Polar Umbrella (pictured above), a floating mushroom-shaped skyscraper, the cap of which provides shade, the intention being to regrow polar icecaps. The city itself is envisioned as part research facility, part tourist attraction, and the designers intend that many such cities would be built where shade is most needed.

Second place: Darius Maïkoff and Elodie Godo's Phobia Skyscraper is a mesh of prefab units embedded into a structure of recycled industrial material

Phobia Skyscraper by Darius Maïkoff and Elodie Godo is a termite mound-like mesh of prefabricated units embedded into an empty tower made from scavenged industrial materials. The building is intended to morph and evolve over time to reflect the needs of its occupants.

Third place: Ting Xu and Yiming Chen's Light Park is a floating city to provide green areas to space-choked cities

Ting Xu and Yiming Chen's Light Park was awarded third place. This floating city is a proposal to add recreational space to a city without need of demolition. Although described as muchroom-shaped, this one looks more like a jellyfish, with a helium-filled bell keeping the city afloat in the sky.

A further 24 submissions received honorable mentions, details of which can be seen in the image gallery. In all, 625 projects were submitted from 83 different countries.

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